The David Lynch Blues
by machiavelli
Summary: Months after the events of 'The Real Folk Blues,' Jet is out of fuel, out of cash and out of luck. He thinks he's hit rock bottom. He's wrong.
1. Dead Man Walking

The David Lynch Blues  
Dead Man Walking  
By Machiavelli  
  
He's let his sense of time slip away. He can feel it in the stomach, the wrongness of it; he's eating irregularly, at the very least. Probably not sleeping right either.  
But he lets it slide. Time's a communal thing.  
He's got a cigarette lit when the call comes. It's to help him forget he's hungry; he just ate a pound of shitake five or ten minutes ago, or something like that, but here's his stomach growling again. So he lights up the cigarette and pulls out a blues album he hasn't listened to for years, or at least since yesterday. And he's just getting settled down when the call comes.  
He hits the receive. "Yeah ?"  
Static in the transmission; must be long distance. Low voice, sort of a British accent. "Jet Black ?"  
"Yeah."  
"Name's Lucien. Word has it you used to work with Fey Valentine."  
He snorts. Takes another draft off the cigarette. Says, finally, "What about her ?"  
"She's dead. Somebody thought you might want to know." Click.  
Later, he tries to trace the call. But the guy knew a few tricks – bounced the signal off receivers on both Europa and Io – so in the end he just lets go of it in disgust.  
  
Afterwards, Jet couldn't put his finger on where exactly his life turned into shit. All he got were a bunch of lines, drawn across his life like a hydrogen spectrograph. Lines he hadn't known he'd crossed at the time, but were as clear as day in 20/20 retrospect.  
For example: Line crossed when he lost his arm. Line crossed when he left the force (though he'd had his reasons for that at the time). Line crossed when he started to do cowboy work (hey, everyone needed to eat). Definite line crossed when he and Spike started letting the woman in on things (what the hell had they been thinking ? Christ. Jet doesn't even know, looking back on it. Least they could've done is kick her out after a month of so. But no, had to let her stick around, and bring in a couple thousand times more trouble than she was worth. Christ.).  
But anyway.  
Line crossed when Ein and Ed took off. Line crossed when the woman went batshit and vanished (without paying her tab, room, repairs, board, or even the damn COD on those packages. Christ.). Line crossed when the bounties started getting tight. Line crossed when he got himself shot in the leg.  
And yeah, line crossed when Spike went down (but there's nothing he could've done about that – you could just look at the guy and tell he'd been waiting for this for years. And when a man wants to die, there's nothing in heaven and hell that's going to stop him).   
And here's Jet now. Not enough cash to buy fuel, not enough cash to even land, for Christ's sake. And nothing to do except orbit around Mars, waiting for the food stores to run out and the oxygen filters to collapse.   
Jet hopes to hell this is rock bottom. But who the hell is he kidding – if there's something lower to be found, chances are it'll happen to him, sooner or later.  
  
Some time later, between the last of the mushrooms and the first couple eggs, he got another call.  
One of his old acquaintances on the Mars force. "Hey, Jet, got a proposition for you, man."  
Which was a perfect setup for a joke or a one-liner. Jet didn't have the energy.  
"Yeah, force is issuing bounties like crazy. Targets all over the place, what with the Dragons biting the dust. Power vacuum and all that shit – you come on down here. Get a piece of the action, man. There's cash all over the place.  
Jet might have mumbled something about his leg.  
"We need someone reliable, man – you should see these piece of shit cowboys we're dealing with. Most useless fuckers in the business, I'm telling you."  
Jet might have said something about his partner being dead.  
"Yeah, man, I was sorry to hear about that. But life goes on, y'know ? Listen, I got this one pusher in Lower Newcal – ten million, easy. Only catch is you gotta bring him to the prison on Phobos to collect. Transportation's tight, y'know – lost some prison transports in the last few months. Escape attempts, shit like that… anyway…"  
  
No way in hell this guy was a pusher, thought Jet, looking at the guy sitting across the room. No way in hell.  
He was sitting in a bar. Mars. Upper Newcal. Vague memories of getting an advance for the job. Landing the Bebop. Trying to get lunch at a café serving Chinese-Thai. Being told by the lady that it was four o'clock in the morning, and if he wanted breakfast he should come back in an hour or so. Talking to some people. Tracking down the pusher to this bar, at this time.   
Fuck, thought Jet. What the hell am I doing down here ? This guy can't be a pusher – he looks like a god-damn professional.   
Police report said the guy went by the name of Johnny Keats (obvious pseudonym, after a nineteenth-century poet Jet had never heard of before). Minor trafficker and smuggler, decided to settle down and get a piece of the pie previously owned by the Red Dragons. Police wouldn't have even bothered with him, if it wasn't for the two or three high-profile turf murders in the past week.   
But this guy wasn't a pusher.   
There's ways you can tell. Just the general look of the guy, for one thing. He sits upright at a precise right angle; he's got at least one gun underneath his coat, hidden in the sleeve. Chances are there's a quick-release holster underneath there – you only see that with a few people. Professionals, ex-military – also kids too stupid to realize that kind of setup only works if you've got the training for it. But Keats doesn't look like a kid. He looks like a killer, born, bred, and trained.   
What the hell am I doing down here ? I can't take this guy – Spike could've, maybe. But it hurt just to stand up on the subway on the way here.  
Just walk away. Let it go.   
Hell.  
And that's right about when the bar window exploded. And Jet was behind the bar a second later, next to the screaming bartender, with the bullets and the broken glass pounding into the wall behind him. No way, he thinks. No fucking way I'm this lucky.  
  
But he was. Except Jet was nearly ninety percent sure this whole thing was a setup.  
He had his reasons. First off, Keats survived the whole thing without a scratch. No one just survives a drive-by shooting. Shit goes down like that, you're going to get shot – maybe just grazed, if you've really got talent. But Keats didn't have so much as a bruise on him.  
Second, it doesn't matter how professional you are – there's no way you can take cover, then get back on your feet and hit back at a drive-by shooter with just a pistol and hope to do anything more than waste ammo. And even when you do, there's no way in hell you can hit the driver – the shooter, maybe, but even that's a one in a million chance. The driver's impossible. But when Jet had gotten up from the bar, there was Keats with his gun out, and there was the car, crashed into a storefront on the other side of the street with the driver's brains spilled out halfway down the street.  
And third – if you are that professional, if you've got that kind of luck and skill, there's no way in hell you're going to be caught after a gunfight with an empty clip. And if some guy – say a bounty hunter – just walks up behind you and puts a gun to your head, you don't just drop your gun on the ground, precisely at the exact point where it's impossible to recover. You turn around and hit the guy behind you, or make a dive for it and change clips. But it doesn't ever get that easy.  
Except here's Jet, holding a gun to the guy's head. And there's the gun, halfway across the room. And there's Keats with his hands up, not saying a word, just staring straight out in front of him.   
Just like a guy who knew all of this was going to happen.  
  
But he couldn't talk to Keats about it. First law of the bounty hunter: don't talk to the mark.  
"Hope you don't mind the Mimetics," said Jet. Keats was handcuffed to the more comfortable chair; he was staring straight ahead blankly. "I've had this album for years. Been meaning to listen to it – just haven't had the time. You want a smoke ?"  
He noted a nearly imperceptible motion of Keats' head, from side to side.  
"Smart man. Always've meant to quit, personally. Not like that counts for anything. Only way to quit is not to start, y'know ? Could've, should've, would've." He blew out a thick cloud of smoke. "'sides, this line of work, you enjoy what you can, while you can, y'know ? My partner being a case in point."  
The Bebop was in orbit now. Phobos was close, at this time of the year. Give it maybe two or three hours to the gate, then a couple minutes transit time.   
Eventually, Jet gets bored with the album; he moves into the observation deck and stared at Mars for a while. He can't remember when he moved the couch in here; it must have been a while ago, but he doesn't think he's used it since then. He isn't even using it now; he just leans against the window and watches the planet turn slowly below him.  
And it occurs to him, for the first time in months, that something's wrong.  
He can't put his finger on it; it's just a vague sense of something troubling on the edge of his consciousness. Something to do with Keats ? Well, yeah, but he knows about that, kinda. What else ?   
Something about Spike ?… well, heard he was buried somewhere. Should probably go and track that down sometime.  
Something to do with the woman ? Nah, wouldn't bother with that. Well… wonder if that guy was right about her. What was his name again ? Lucius ?… shit, where's he heard that name before ?  
Then it occurs to Jet that the phone in here is ringing, and has been for a while. He finishes off the last of his cigarette, and without concern reaches for the phone. Hits RECEIVE.  
"I think the Mimetics show promise," says Keats. "I have to admit that I personally consider this album a disappointment, but as a group they have a chance to recover."  
Before Jet knows it, he's back in the living room. The chair's empty, save for two handcuffs hanging limply from the arms. And the album's repeating itself in the audio player.  
  
Jet, you fucking moron. I don't know what's wrong with your brain, but you and me, we're gonna have us a talk after this.  
Here he is now, gun in one hand, phone in the other. At the least, he's got to keep Keats talking. He's in the hallway now, slowly working his way to the back of the ship.  
He's just asked Keats what he means.  
"When they first came out, the Mimetics had an original sound," says Keats. "Hard-rock blues in the Jimmie Morrison tradition, but with a heavy zydeco influence I appreciated. The group peaked, in my personal opinion, with 'Blue Light, Green Light' on their second album. Unfortunately, after that, the group's guitarist – their Brian Wilson, essentially – developed a taste for processed heroin. Since then, the quality and quantity of their output has substantially decreased, at least in my opinion."  
"Uh-huh," says Jet. He's checked both the kitchen and the bridge by this time.  
"Mind if I changed the subject ?"  
"Go ahead."  
"I was there when your boy Spike died," says Keats. "Wasn't wounded bad; best bet is Vicious salted a little poison on his blade. Anyway, right before he kicked, he did that thing with his hand, you know, said 'bang' and collapsed. Bullshit gesture, of course, but who can blame a man who's dying ?"  
Jet's checked the bathroom and the storage room. Still no sign of the guy. Not even a footprint.  
"Now, what was that woman's name again ?" says Keats. "Valentine. That's right. She had a particular look when she died, right in her eyes. Fear, of course; that's to be taken for granted. But also a certain world-weariness; almost like she understood the necessity of the action, even as it occurred. She always struck me as one of those people who build themselves up as a puzzle, in the hope that someone will solve them. But who has the time for that kind of bullshit in this day and age ?"  
Why the hell didn't Jet check the hanger to begin with ? He's on his way there now, checking the hallway.  
"Remember my eyes," says Keats softly. "That's what the surgeons always say – if you want to recognize them, look them in the eye."  
Jet swings around a corner and suddenly his gun is pointed directly at Keats. Keats is holding a phone in his right hand, and is standing against the far wall of the hanger.  
And Jet can't help it. He looks.  
There is a moment there where they just stare at each other. Keats has this look of unnatural preciseness – like someone who is examining and analyzing your every move, and from that knows exactly who you are. Jet's leg hurts like a bitch.  
"If you think you're Udai Taxim," Jet says, "you're insane."  
Keats smiles.  
And pulls something out of his left pocket.   
Jet opens fire before he can even see what the thing is. And the next thing he knows, the hanger airlock's opening. Jet swears, hooks his cyberarm around a pipe running down the back wall before he even knew he reacted.   
And Keats, in front of him, is still smiling. He lets go of what he's holding – out of his left hand, the hanger door remote from the Hammerhead drops into oblivion. Keats crosses his arms across his chest, like Tutankhamen. He looks right at Jet, right into the eyes smiling.  
And jumps backwards.  
  
Later on, Jet couldn't recall how he shut the door, or what he did afterwards. The next thing he knew, he was back in the observation lounge, eating leftover Thai from breakfast because there wasn't enough oxygen for him to light a cigarette up. In between bites of noodles, it occurred to him for the first time that this wasn't like him. A couple of months ago, he would have analyzed, gone looking for Keats' corpse, contacted the Mars police, gone looking for information.  
But he can't, for some reason. His mind just avoids the subject, like an awkward conversation.  
Spike would've been proud. Maybe.  
  
  
  
Footnotes:  
Maybe you remember Udai Taxim from Session 16, "The Black Dog Serenade." Maybe you don't. Try http://rfblues.aaanime.net/Sessions/session16.htm.   
I may write more of this story. Maybe. 


	2. The Cat Came Back The Very Next Day

David Lynch Blues  
The Cat Came Back The Very Next Day  
By Machiavelli  
  
It took Jet maybe a week after Keats' death before he fully recognized that he was insane. He'd suspected it up until that point, but he wasn't entirely sure of the fact until he walked in one day to find Spike sprawled out across the couch.  
"You're out of food," he said. He had a plate in his hand with what was left of the shitake spread across it.  
"That shitake's two weeks old," said Jet.  
Spike shrugged, and gulped down what was left.  
Jet couldn't remember when he put the Bebop down back on Mars. What was left of his cash after the toll had gone to, in no particular order, a Chinese-Italian takeout place just down from the dock, a kid he'd seen begging on the street somewhere, a bargain-basement ammunition store, various cigarette hawkers throughout the city, a black market O2 salesman, an old woman who needed a few more quarters for subway fare, a taxi ride that had lasted thirty-two minutes, fourteen seconds (plus tip), and a bus pass that would expire in about a month.   
He hadn't heard from the cop who'd given him the advance. He didn't really care.  
Spike stayed awake long enough to devour the leftover chicken chow-mein Jet had doggy-bagged. Jet went back up onto the deck to have a smoke. When he came back in an hour later, Spike was awake and watching a late-night soap opera.  
He looked up as Jet entered. "I have no idea what's going on," he said. "I missed the last few episodes."  
"The Russian guy came out of his coma," said Jet. "And that one woman, the blonde, she's dead."  
"I thought she was off on a spiritual journey."  
"She was. She died in a plane crash on the way back."  
"You know, you're not acting like yourself," said Spike.  
Jet grinned, kinda. "That so."  
"You didn't used to watch soap operas."  
"I've had a lot of time on my hand. And at least I'm not dead."  
Spike shrugged. "Just making an observation."  
"Whatever." And then both of them shut up, because the Russian guy's estranged fiancée was starting to take off her blouse.  
  
Jet fell asleep on the couch in the observation deck. When he woke up sometime in the afternoon, Spike was sitting on the other side of the room, staring at him.  
Jet rubbed out his eyes. "What the hell are you looking at ?"  
"You haven't asked me any questions," said Spike.  
"You're dead," said Jet.  
Spike shrugged.  
"You're actually dead," said Jet. "I saw your grave yesterday. The cops didn't know your name, so they just put your autopsy photo on the tombstone. You had two bullet holes in you."  
"In the shoulder," said Spike. "I think Vicious poisoned his blade. It's the sort of thing he would do."  
"They had the coroner's office right next door to the cemetery. I went in and checked with them. They had everything - crime scene analysis, video of the autopsy, confirmation of burial. They showed me your lungs and liver - they had them in storage for the organ donor program."  
"Wouldn't want to be the person who got that liver."  
"The point is, you're dead. Certified, in the ground, gone forever, in heaven or hell or wherever beating the crap out of guys for all eternity, or whatever the hell you want to do. With Julia, if that was her name."  
"It was."  
"Yeah."  
They were staring at each other in the eye now, from across the room. Jet finally looked away. Across the reflections of the sun in the water, across the dock, at the desert horizon beyond the shield wall.   
Spike finally said something. "Did you take a taxi there ?"  
"Where ?"  
"To the cemetery."  
"Yeah."  
"I think I might have taken it."  
"Really."  
"I'm sorry."  
"You were an asshole," said Jet. "Do you know that ? You really were."  
"I said I was sorry."  
"Get the hell out of here."  
"Did you have to walk back ?"  
"I took the bus. Get out."  
He's not looking at Spike, but he hears him shrug. "All right."  
Footsteps away from the room. Down the hall a bit. Jet sits back out on the couch. Keeps staring to the west.  
"Jet ?" He's calling from down the hallway.  
"What ?"   
"Do you think you're insane ?"  
"Yes."  
"So you think you're hallucinating me."  
"You're dead."  
"That's okay," says Spike. "I can't say it isn't a possibility."  
"Get the fuck out."  
"All right, all right." Footsteps further away, down the hall.  
At some point, Jet lights another cigarette. He stops staring into the west, mainly because the sun's getting lower towards the horizon. He notices that, even though this is a fresh pack, one of the cigarettes is missing. He's betting Spike has something to do with that, because he's sitting on the dock outside the window, using one of Jet's mugs as an ashtray.  
Funny, Jet thinks. I'm pretty sure that he didn't used to be black. 


	3. It Never Snows In Florida

David Lynch Blues  
It Never Snows In Florida  
By Machiavelli  
  
Jimmie's been a squatter for a couple of years now. He generally keeps to the Newcal subways; they're usually pretty warm, and plus he can raid the vending machines if he comes across any spare change. A couple of years ago, one of the machines broke and started spitting out candy bars everywhere; he must've grabbed twenty or thirty before security showed up. He lived for a couple of weeks off of that one; still has most of the wrappers in his sax case.  
He's been playing the sax for maybe eight months. He isn't great at it; usually it'll only net him a couple of quarters when he plays in the subway. But it gives him something to do, and something to call his own. He managed to scrap up enough to buy a new reed a couple of weeks ago. It was worth it, kinda; he still plays like shit. But least it doesn't go nuts sometimes, like the other one did.  
It sometimes gets him in trouble, though. Like a couple of days ago, for example. He was having a beer, fresh out of the machine, when this Hispanic guy in a suit comes up to him. Jimmie didn't notice him at first – in fact, didn't notice him at all until the guy pulled out a gun and puts it to Jimmie's neck, just like that.  
"Listen up, shitbag," said the guy. Speaks with a Midwest accent. "Only reason you're not dead now is because you don't know shit, okay ?"  
"Okay," said Jimmie. He didn't know what else to say.  
"Me and my employers, we own this subway, okay ? We say what goes on, we say what gets played. Either you stop playing that thing, or we shoot your ass dead. You got it ?"  
"I got it," said Jimmie.  
"That's good," said the suit. Then he kicked Jimmie right in the lower ribs. Jimmie hit his head against the wall and lost consciousness; he came to a couple hours later in a puddle of Budweiser. The suit was gone, but there was a rolled-up business card shoved up Jimmie's nose. He pulled it out and took at a look at it – it just said, in small type:  
RSC. www.umi.com  
Jimmie hasn't touched a computer in three years. So he just threw it out, and hasn't played his sax since.  
Now it's maybe one or two in the morning. Jimmie's trying to get some sleep. He's sleeping next to the storage lockers, right underneath the security camera – which is the only place you can sleep around here. If they see you this close to the lockers, they'll get nervous and send a cop to chase you off. But as long as the camera can't see you, you're fine. Jimmie's sitting up against the wall; he's got his head propped up against his sax case.  
But he can't sleep. Can't tell you why – he used to the lights being on all the time. So eventually he gives up and just stares up at the ceiling. There's a picture spray-painted up there that he likes – that's why he sleeps around here. It's this beautiful woman, done in blues and greens. She has this smile on her face that Jimmie can't really describe – it's sort of sweet and sort of tired, and it makes him think of Florida. That was where he grew up, before they evacuated everybody to Mars; he still misses the palm trees sometimes.   
"She doesn't really exist, you know." Voice from behind Jimmie.   
Jimmie's up in his feet in the next second, sax case in hand, heart pounding. The guy just keeps staring up at the ceiling. He's white, got these little glasses on that Jimmie can barely see. And he's just staring up at the ceiling, at the girl.  
"Fuck, man, you scared me," says Jimmie.  
"She's not a real person," the guy says. Still looking up. "She's an idea that someone had a very long time ago. An angel of redemption, who sees all and understands everything. An impossibility in this day and age. Or, at least, in the world as it exists."  
You see a lot of druggies down in the subway. Shit, Jimmie used to do acid a long time ago, back when he could afford it. He starts to relax.  
Then the man turns his gaze downward. Looks at Jimmie right in the eye.  
And Jimmie can't move. He's paralyzed, with the only thing in his mind something screaming in the back of his head like a banshee. Because the man's got eyes like four hundred watt bulbs – the kind that looks straight through you right down into your soul, and doesn't like what it sees there. The kind of eyes God has on a bad day.  
"But ideas have power," says the man.  
Then he looks over Jimmie's shoulder at something. Jimmie does too, reflexively. And sees the Hispanic walking towards them, with five guys following him. Every one of them has a gun out.   
"Run," says the man.  
Jimmie doesn't need a cue. He jumps past him and runs like the devil, for maybe fifteen or twenty paces. Then he realizes he isn't holding his sax case anymore, so he stops, and that's right when a bullet whips straight past his shoulder. So he notices there's a woman's bathroom right next to him in the wall; he dives through the door before he can think about it, and just huddles there underneath the frame. And then the screaming starts from down the hall.  
A little while later, it stops. Jimmie waits a little while longer, then pokes his head out of the door.  
There's a lot of bodies and a lot of blood, he notices. And in the middle of it all, there's the guy with the glasses. He's holding Jimmie's sax case.   
He grips the doorframe and pulls himself up. He walks towards the guy. "Hey."  
The guy ignores him. He opens up the case, shifts through the wrappers. Like he's looking for something.  
"Hey, man, that's mine."  
The guy turns and looks at him. And Jimmie suddenly realizes that that's a shitload of blood on the floor.  
The man turns back to the case, pulls something out. It's wrapped in paper – Jimmie doesn't recognize it. The guy pulls the paper off the thing with his hand; turns out to be a card, like a moneycard or something. Jimmie doesn't have any shit like that.   
The guy turns to one of the lockers in the wall. Feeds in the card. Presses his hand to the print reader.   
The locker pops open, just like that. A little idiot voice says, somewhere within its guts, "Noite boa, senior John Keats. Nós agradecemo-lo usando U-Stor-o. Nós esperamo-lo temos um dia agradável." It starts to spit out a receipt.  
The guy reaches into the machine and pulls out something. It's some kind of machine, box-shaped, with all kinds of buttons sticking out on the side. It fits into the palm of the guy's hand. The way he holds it, it's like he's got a wedding ring in his hand.   
Then Jimmie recognizes the thing. His dad had one, back in Florida.  
"That's a tape recorder," he says, before he can stop himself.  
And then the man's turned around, and he's looking at Jimmie straight in the eye. And Jimmie remembers the bodies on the floor, and the blood. And he realizes he never even heard a single gunshot, and the guy doesn't have a scratch on him, and has blood all over his hands. Even the one he's got the tape recorder in.  
"Take care of yourself," says the man. And he holds out Jimmie's sax case.  
Jimmie takes it. And the man turns and walks off. Just like that.  
  
Two weeks later, Jimmie's dead. He's shot by a cop in the Aruba subway, trying to make a run for it. The cop needed some extra arrests for his record, so he'd tried to pick up Jimmie for loitering. Naturally, it didn't work out that way, so the cop dropped off the body with a friend of his in Forensics and hocked Jimmie's sax in at a local pawnshop. The cop figured he'd done worst things in his life, and besides, there was a lot of pressure from City Hall these days to keep the subways clear. The election was in a couple of weeks, after all.  
A couple of days before, Jimmie played his sax out on the streets. He ended up with a crowd of kids watching him; most of them were stoned. The exception was this nine-year-old by the name of Ronnie, who was just tagging along with his older brother. And sometimes in the years to come, Ronnie would vaguely remember this song he once heard, about a smiling woman and palm trees, and some place called Florida… 


	4. Hellhound On My Trail

The David Lynch Blues  
Hellhound On My Trail  
By Machiavelli  
  
The cops have finally decided to turn up. They have at least three patrol cars cordoning off the area; it's another five minutes before the ambulances arrive. Overhead, a helicopter begins a slow, careful dive through the skyscrapers and down into the street below. From it a full assault team springs out and hustles into the subway tunnel. Heavy artillery, considering only six people are dead.   
He watches from the roof of a nearby building. Waits until they begin to haul out the corpses; notes the life support system attached to the Hispanic's body. As the medics peel off into the east he turns away from the scene. In his left hand he has a tape recorder; in his right he has a phone.   
He puts the phone to his ear and dials.  
  
  
  
The advance pretty much evaporated over the next few days, mostly thanks to Spike, who kept eating the leftovers. Jet spent the last five bucks on a Sunday, on an small serving of chicken parmesan with a side order of soy sauce.   
"I'm broke," he said to Spike, as he walked in the door.  
"That's nice," said Spike. "Somebody called for you while you were out." He tossed a memo pad to Jet.  
Jet caught it, reluctantly. "Since when do you take messages ?"  
"His voice sounded familiar."  
Jet glanced at the pad. On it was written, in Spike's mostly illegible handwriting, Udai Taxim called. Recommends you leave Mars as soon as possible. Still has your other phone, will give back to you when you next run into him.  
They ended up splitting the chicken parmesan sixty-forty. Jet took the forty and the soy sauce, which he tried mixing with the last of the instant coffee. The coffee refused to dissolve; the concoction looked like crude oil topped off with ground asphalt. So he threw it over the side and had a beer instead.  
  
Spike was still hungry after the chicken, so they wandered down to a convenience store a couple of blocks away. There technically was no point to it, as Jet's total net value was roughly equivalent to the half-empty pack of cigarettes in his pocket. But it's the sort of thing you do when you're broke, so he went along with it.   
The store had a no-smoking sign up, so Jet waited in back while Spike chatted up the moderately attractive girl working the register. He finished up the smoke just as Spike came out the back door. Spike was holding a cup of coffee. "Managed to get an ex -"  
And that's as far as he got, because that's when Jet sucker-punched him. With the metal arm.  
Spike still had it. Even as Jet made contact, he was shifting upwards, taking the blow in the stomach rather than the lower ribs. And then Spike was down, lying on his back a couple of feet away from Jet, the coffee spilled across the pavement.  
There was an awkward silence.  
"Ow," said Spike.   
Jet flexed his wrist. "Always wanted to do that," he said.   
And abruptly Spike was upright, crouching on the ground on all fours. "You know, I was going to give you that coffee," he said.  
And then there was kind of a blur, and Jet was staring into the pavement. He tried to get up, but for some reason his legs refused to work. It was also abruptly harder to breathe.   
Eventually, he managed to flip himself over on his side. Spike was sitting on the other side of the alley, his back leaning on a dumpster. He was clutching his stomach with one arm. To Jet's disappointment, he only looked slightly pissed off.  
"You could've just asked me to take the fucking soy sauce, you know."  
Jet managed to prop himself up on his arm. "Shouldn't you be kicking the shit out of me right now ?" he managed to gasp out.  
"Maybe once the people with the guns have left."  
Right on cue, about three rounds' worth of automatic fire went through the alley at chest height. A second later, Jet found himself sitting next to Spike, the dumpster screaming as the bullets pounded into it.  
Shit, he thought. Thought I had him there for a second.  
  
Four rounds later, the gun at the other end of the alleyway fell silent.  
"Six at the end of the alley," said Spike in a low tone of voice. "Probably more going through the store."  
"Great," said Jet.  
"Where's your gun ?"  
"Left it back in the ship."  
"Did you now."  
"Where's yours ?"  
"I lost it."  
"Huh." Behind them, the alleyway was blocked off by a tall metal fence. Climbable, technically, but in his shape they could kill him thirty times over before he even got halfway up. Then there was the end of the alleyway, where the people with the guns were waiting.   
Then there was the door back into the store, right across from them.  
"You know, if I had a gun, I would tend to carry it around with me," said Spike.  
"Would you now. Guess I'm just getting old."   
Noise at the end of the alley. Someone reloading his gun. Assault rifle from the sound of it.   
"So what do you think ?" said Spike.  
"What do I think about what ?"  
"The fence or the door ?"  
More sounds now. Not reloading. Some kind of mechanical clicking. Can't put his finger on what it is.  
"Door," said Jet.  
"I said they probably have people in there."  
Jet's grinning now. Has been for a while, it feels like. "All right. In that case. Fence."  
Spike doesn't say anything.  
The sound's stopped at the end of the alley. Nothing now. No sound.  
There's a click beside him. Spike's lighter - he's lighting a smoke. "Here," he says.  
Jet glances over. Spike's holding the coffee.  
"There's a little bit left in the bottom," he says.  
"I hate expresso," says Jet.  
And then, just for the hell of it, he jumps to his feet and charges down the alley.  
  
After that, everything got a little fuzzy. Spike was down the alley only a couple of seconds after Jet, he remembers that part.   
And then Jet's just standing there, at the end of the alleyway, and he's alive. He's got an assault rifle in his hand, he notices. There's blood on the stock - hasn't pulled the trigger once, he's pretty sure. His chest hurts, he notices. Actually, feels like his lungs have been torn out and stuffed back into his rib cage.  
Footstep behind him. Jet turns and aims the rifle before he even knows what he's doing, then loses his balance and collapses back against the wall.   
Anyway, it's Spike, walking out from the alley. Smoking his cigarette, submachine gun held casually in his other hand. "Four more in the store," he says.  
Jet tries to nod, but for some reason that hurts too. So instead he just lets himself slide down to the pavement.  
Spike's rummaging through his pocket. He pulls out a handheld minidisk player and a pair of earphones.  
"All of them had these," he said. "Same disk, too. Only one track." He drops the earphones into Jet's hand and hits play.   
Out of the earphones comes a tinny chorus. It takes Jet a moment to make out the words:  
  
oh bla di oh bla da life goes on ra  
la la how the life goes on  
  
It repeats over and over again, like a broken record.  
"There's one more thing," says Spike. "One of the guys in the store was wearing an expensive suit. He had this in his pocket."  
He's holding a red minidisk in his hand. Printed on it, in neat letters: JET BLACK.  
Jet reaches out for it before he even knows what he's doing. "Let me see that." Or at least that's what he tries to say; the way his chest is at the moment, he can't quite get the words out.  
But Spike gets the point. "Are you sure ?"   
Jet keeps his hand held out. Spike looks at him for a moment, then drops the disc into his hand.  
Jet pulls the disc in the miniplayer out. That disc is white, and has printed on it Fu-xi Turing #3. © United Music Interests, Inc., 2071. He throws it to the side and puts in the red one; he holds the phones up to his ear with his left arm.  
It starts out slow. He recognizes it after a while; it's an old song. Something about looking for America, and car lights on an open highway.   
He barely hears Spike ask a question in his other ear. Something like, "Any idea who they were ?"  
"Who gives a shit ?" Jet hears himself say back.  
Then he shuts his eyes and turns up the volume. And disappears for a little while. 


	5. Up Jumped The Devil

The David Lynch Blues  
Up Jumped The Devil  
By Machiavelli  
  
The bonsai must have been dead for weeks. Jet doesn't remember when he stopped watering them; must've been at least a month ago. In any case, all that's left of it is this shriveled-up stick, in dirt so dry it could have come out of a desert.  
He lifts his lighter to what's left of the leaves and clicks it once. And stays to watch it burn, even as the smoke clogs the air and makes it hard to breathe.  
  
Then he digs out his old trenchcoat, the one he bought the day he graduated from the academy, and heads out.  
He passes by the living room, goes out through the hanger door onto the deck. He's almost to the dock when Spike says, from behind him:  
"I see you remembered your gun this time."  
Jet doesn't turn around.   
"I ever tell you why I stopped being a cop ?" he says into the air.  
"You said it had something to do with your arm."  
"Well, yeah, that was part of it," says Jet. He's looking past the dock into the city. Not many lights out there at this time of the night, with the exception of downtown. There, it's mainly the holographic ads, playing on the sides of the buildings. Beer commercials, movie posters, shit like that. Hurts his eyes just to look at it.  
"I was out for maybe a month after that. Insurance covered all the bills, plus I got disability, so I didn't have anything to do but sit around and wait.  
"They had another cop in the room across the hall from me - had a whole wing for government employees right over the emergency room. I'd hear this guy screaming at night - he was even worst off than I was, got himself burned in some explosion. So one day after they'd given me the arm and I was basically okay, I walked across the hall and asked him why they weren't giving him any kind of pain meds.  
"Turns out they were. Nothing less than morphine. But the guy wasn't using it - he was selling it to one of the local syndicates. He had his nurse in on it; every day she'd take it outside, sell it to his contact, and they'd split it fifty-fifty. He said something about wanting a new apartment once he got out of there.  
"And I'd seen worst, you know ? I'd seen a lot worst.  
"But the next day they let me out, I went straight to headquarters, and I got out of the force. And a week or so after that, my girl left me, so I bought the Bebop with my disability and left Ganymede."  
Out in the distance, one of the beer commercials disappears. A second later, a music video appears in its place.  
"Interesting story," says Spike.  
Jet turns around. Spike's sitting on the edge of the hull, his feet dangling over the edge, smoking a cigarette. Jet looks at him straight in the eye. "Spike. Give me my gun back."  
"I had my reasons for what I did," says Spike. The lights from downtown reflect off his eyes; makes it look like he's got redeye, like in a cheap photograph. "My entire life led to that place and that time."  
Jet holds out his hand. "I didn't stand in your way."  
There's a breeze coming off of the lake now. He feels it on his face. It's a land breeze. Heading into the city.  
A little time passes. Then Spike looks away.  
He reaches into his coat and pulls out the gun. He puts one of his feet back on the hull and kicks it across the deck. Jet leans down as it comes; it slides right into his hand.   
He rights himself back up and sticks it into his coat pocket.  
"Do you know what I'm doing here ?" says Spike.   
Jet looks at him.  
"Me and Vicious and Julia, one last time. That was supposed to be the end of everything."  
"I don't know," says Jet. "I don't know anything anymore."  
Spike's looking out away from him, cigarette in his hand. Looking down, into the water.  
"You were always the smart one, you know ?" says Jet. "The one who saw things. You'll figure it out."  
Spike didn't say anything. So Jet turns around, and he steps onto the dock.   
  
He catches a bus half a block away. He figures he'll head into the city, find someplace with a nice view.  
The bus is pretty much empty. A couple of kids in the back, an old lady sitting out in the front. Jet takes a window seat towards the middle, and stares out into the street as the bus starts to move again.  
I gotta think of things. Alisa and her watch. Fad and his cigarettes. Things like that. Have to keep it all in my head.  
But for some reason it doesn't work.   
The bus stops again. Jet watches out of the corner of his eye as two more kids get on. One of them is white, red hair, and is as fat as a whale; the other guy looks vaguely Mediterranean, and a little bit younger, despite the fact he's got a beard. They sit down in the two seats across the aisle from Jet, fat kid at the window. They both have wearable computers; Mediterranean kid has a pair of goggles as a display. Fat kid seems to have an implanted screen in his hand.   
Jet looks out the window again, and tries to think about his days on the force. Little while later, he hears movement off to his left; someone's just sat down behind him. He glances over quickly; now there's just the fat kid sitting on his left. And he was looking in Jet's direction, before Jet turned his head.  
Fuck this. I don't have to put up with this tonight.  
"Excuse me," he says to the fat kid. The fat kid snaps straight up in his seat. "There some kind of problem ?"  
"Mr. Jet Black," says the Mediterranean kid from behind Jet. "Retired ISSP, currently an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, owner of the fishing trawler Cowboy Bebop, until recently the partner and traveling companion of the hacker Radical Edward."   
Jet shuts his eyes and leans back in the seat. "Let me guess. Hackers."  
"Correct," says the fat kid. "I am currently known as Wintermute. If I may introduce my partner Hal 2000 ?"  
Christ. I don't have time for this. "What the fuck do you want ?"   
"Information," says HAL 2000 from behind Jet. "We were wondering if you knew Radical Edward's current whereabouts and activities."  
"If I did, why the hell would I tell you ?"  
"As far as we can tell, Edward has not been online for the past month," says Wintermute. "Given his past accomplishments, we see reason for concern, especially as there seems to be a complete dearth of information regarding his events and activities."  
"In essence, he has completely disappeared," says HAL.  
"Sorry to hear that," says Jet.  
"Do you have any idea what Edward's plans when you parted company three months ago ?" says HAL.  
Jet snorts. "I don't think Ed's had a plan in her life."  
"Have you had any personal contact in the last two months ?" says Wintermute. "We know that he has not contacted you by electronic means since his departure."  
"Look, are you sure she hasn't just changed her email address or something ?" asked Jet. He opens his eyes, just a little, in time to see both the hackers wince.   
"Like most among our number, Edward changes handles on a frequent basis," says Wintermute. "However, those in our profession tend to have particular styles that are recognizable to the trained eye."  
"Edward's iconography, for example, is particularly unique," says HAL.  
"Edward has shown himself in the past to be particularly resistant to capture by the authorities. And our other contacts on Earth have confirmed that there has been no special effort on behalf of either the local authorities or the ISSP to capture Edward or hackers in general."  
"As such, if Edward has been silenced, it has been by a third power that we have yet to identify. Such an organization if it exists would require impressive electronic resources, both to physically track down Edward and to escape our detection."  
"You therefore see the reason for our concern," says Wintermute.  
"Uh-huh," says Jet. "Look, do either of you guys need a bus pass ?"  
"No thanks," says the Mediterranean kid. "Rigged the metro system a while back. We ride for free."  
"Which is how we also, by the way, tracked you down to this particular bus at this particular time," says the fat kid.  
"Should you be contacted by Ed in the future, we request that you contact us," says HAL. "You can contact us at this address." He reaches his arm past the little gap between the seat and the window, a business card held professionally between his index finger and thumb.  
Jet takes the card and shoves it in his pocket. "Fine. I'll do that."  
The hackers fall silent. Jet stares out the window again; they're nearly into downtown.  
"I'm sorry," says the fat kid, "but did you say 'her' ?"   
  
Jet throws out the business card as soon as he gets off the bus. It's starting to drizzle a little. He pulls up the collar of the coat. Should've worn the hat.  
He sees this old guy playing a sax a little further up the street, out in front of a subway station. He stops and listens to the song for a little bit, then tosses his bus card into the open sax case.  
The guy stops playing and lowers the sax. "Hey, mister, pick that back up. I don't take cards."  
"Keep it," says Jet.  
"Don't want to," says the old guy. "Trust me, man, I got reasons."  
Jet gives up. "Have it your way." He bends down and picks the card back up. "Nice song."  
"Yeah, thanks. You take care, okay, man ?"  
"Yeah. You too." Jet turns away and starts walking up the street again.   
He can hear the sax behind him for about half a block. Then it stops; sounds like the old guy's starting to sing. Jet can't make out the words from here, so he just keeps moving.  
  
He found his way onto the roof of a high-class apartment building just outside of town. He through the door he just jimmied, out onto the rooftop. View's not bad from here. He can see most of the city, plus outside the shield wall a little ways. Not a bad view at all.  
He walks to the very edge. Lets the toe of his shoe stand over the fifty stories of so between him and the parking lot. Pulls out his gun; puts it to the temple of his head. Shuts his eyes.  
Remember the names right now, even you can't remember anything else. Alisa. Fad. The faces of my parents and Grand-dad, before he died. That girl I saw this one time, out of the corner of my eye, that one night I was driving down the highway. Ein. Ed. What the hell, Spike. And why not, even the woman.   
Remember that song from last night.  
Slowly he lets his finger pull back the trigger.  
We've all gone to look for America….  
"Open your eyes."  
Keats' voice. Right behind him.   
  
  
***  
I did not intend to offend anyone by my description of Wintermute. For some reason, he and the other hacker looked like Harry and Moriarty of Ain't It Cool News fame.  
Just to make sure everyone knows: Udai Taxim is the hitman who cut off Jet's arm. 


	6. Me And The Devil Blues

The David Lynch Blues  
Me And The Devil Blues  
By Machiavelli  
  
Somehow, he's turned himself around on that ledge before he can think. And Keats standing there, maybe thirty paces across the roof over by the wall. Jet realizes his gun's pointing towards him now, not his head, and before the neurons even have a chance to line up his finger pulls back on the trigger.  
The recoil is pushing him backwards, towards that fifty stories. Somehow he ends up falling to the side instead, and rolls away from the edge. Then he's up on his feet, gun out, eyes trying to scan everywhere at once. No sign of Keats, no sign of blood.  
Then Jet's brain finally catches up. What the hell am I doing ? I didn't come here to deal with him.  
Then he sees Keats to his left, holding a gun in each hand. And that's right about when Jet feels a bullet rip into his flesh shoulder. Knocking him back towards the edge.   
He catches himself an inch from the fall. Only cover in sight is the elevator housing - he just runs towards that fast as he can. Hears a bullet goes by his ear, another one hits the roof. But he makes it to the wall, swings himself around it.   
Shit, shit, shit. His arm's screaming, his legs, his heart - everything hurts. That son of a bitch. That fucking son of a bitch.  
I'm too old for this shit. I'm old and I'm tired, and nothing in my life makes sense anymore. I just want to open my eyes and have all of this be some fucking nightmare.  
He hears footsteps around on the other side of the wall somewhere. Slow, careful pace. Getting closer. Jet looks down to check his ammo - but he can't, because it looks like he dropped his gun on that last run between the edge and the wall.   
Shit.  
And somewhere around the corner, he hears the footsteps stop.   
  
It sounds like Keats is standing up against the wall, right around the corner. Jet hears a clip being ejected from a gun; couple of seconds later, another click - new clip being loaded. A couple of seconds pass. Then the same thing for the other gun.  
Come on, you son of a bitch. Come and get me already.  
Jet's been trying to force himself to stay on his feet. Hasn't really worked out. Has to kind of lean against the wall.   
Just come on. Do something, you bastard.  
Another footstep. He's coming closer.  
Finish it.  
"You may be interested to know," says Keats, so quiet that Jet can barely hear him over his own breathing, "that the Mimetics' next album comes out in a month."  
Jet stays still. He tries to move his left arm. The metal one.  
"But I never thought I would see you become a coward, Jet Black. I never saw fear in your eyes back in Ganymede. Not even in the alley, with the light on your face."  
It starts to respond; the elbow first, then the wrist and the shoulder.  
"You have all the pieces of the puzzle in your hand," whispers the man behind the wall. "They know you're close. They are afraid of a person like you. And here I find you, with all the information you need right in the palm of your hand. Only you lack the courage to put it all together."  
Fingers are working now. Plus the endorphins are starting to kick in; doesn't hurt as much. He thinks he has a switchblade in his right pocket. Took it off an arrest years ago.  
"Come around the corner, Black Dog," whispers Udai Taxim. "Come around and face me."  
There's nothing in there except the miniplayer from last night. So it's just the arm, then.  
He waits for Taxim to make some kind of move around the other side. But he doesn't hear anything, not even breathing. So he just counts to three and throws himself around the other side.  
  
Except Taxim's not there anymore.  
Something makes Jet look up, and there's Taxim, standing on top of the elevator housing. Then Taxim's two feet in front of Jet, the concrete shattering under his right foot. Jet pulls himself back, both his legs collapse underneath him. He glances to the side and sees his gun there. Reaches out for it with his arm as he falls.  
Except then there's Taxim right beside him, holding Jet's arm. And everything's going blurry for Jet, he can't seem to move, he's heading downwards. And then Taxim's got something in his hand, he's sticking it next to Jet's ear. Some piece of plastic, not a gun, looks like one of those old tape recorders...  
"Listen," says Taxim.  
And Jet hears a click next to his face. And that's right about when he's hits the ground, and everything goes black, except for the music…  
  
  
  
Someone's pulling some kind of shit on Jet. There's this bright light right in his eyes. Hurts like hell.  
He opens them just to see what it is. Takes him a couple of minutes to realize it's the sun. It's pretty weak on Mars, but still, he's staring right into it. So he tries to get up, except that doesn't work out, because it feels like every bone in his body has been broken or at least fractured. Especially his shoulder.  
So he just moves his head, even though that hurts too. And there's Keats, sitting on the other side of the roof near the edge, about ten or twenty paces from Jet. He's watching Jet out of the corner of his eye (shit, thinks Jet, he is Taxim. He's even wearing those glasses he had on the prison transport). Holding some kind of battered-looking machine in his palm - looks like one of those old tape recorders people used to have. It's making some kind of whirring noise, like it's fast-forwarding or rewinding or something.   
Jet wonders if he can talk. He tries to say something like "just kill me already," but it turns out his face as a whole hurts too, so all he can get out is a vague kind of gagging sound.  
But it's enough to make Taxim look up at him. His look is something like a glower, especially through those glasses. He holds up something in his other hand - the red disc (where the hell -- oh, that's right, still had it in the player).   
"You listened to this, I assume," he says. He makes a fist and crushes the disc in his bare hand. "You still don't know anything, do you ?" He opens his hand, lets the powder fall off over the edge.  
Shit, thinks Jet. I liked that song.  
There's a loud noise in the distance, coming closer. Taxim stands up. He's wearing a black trenchcoat, which twists and ripples in the light breeze. He walks closer to Jet, pocketing the recorder.  
"You and I have unfinished business," he says quietly. He reaches out his arm, like he's stretching; next instance, there's a knife in his hand. "The alley, the transport."  
Jet doesn't even blink. Then the knife's stuck in the solid concrete, about a quarter of an inch from his eye. Blocks his view of the guy.  
"But you're useful to me alive right now," says Taxim or Keats, or whoever the hell he is. "As a distraction. You may even be a threat to them, if you find Julia."  
There there's an unholy racket above Jet - sounds like a ship landing on the roof. But he can hear Taxim whisper over it, right into Jet's ear:  
"Meet me at the crossroads. Then I'll kill you."  
Then the sound of his footsteps, walking slowly away. A little while later, there's what sounds like a small explosion, but it's just the ship taking off.   
And then there's just Jet. Alone on the rooftop.  
  
Eventually he manages to get enough energy to lift up his head. Yeah, that hurts too, and he can't do it for very long. But it's enough to for him to see his shoulder's still bleeding. Plus, his left arm's damaged - there's a big dent in the metal, just below the elbow. It looks like the imprint of a bare human hand, each finger visible in the shape of it.   
His gun's lying over near the elevator housing, maybe five paces from the corner.  
He also sees something sitting on the edge of the roof, over where Taxim had been sitting. It's his phone, propped up next to the edge.  
And after that he collapses back and lets himself ache. It's close to afternoon, judging from the sun. For some strange reason, he doesn't feel hungry right now. Cigarette would be nice, though he thinks he smoked the last one back on the bus.  
He briefly lets himself wonder how he's going to get down from the roof. But he can't really think of a way, what with him not being able to stand up. So eventually he just lets it go. 


	7. Maybe We Can Go Back To Yesterday

The David Lynch Blues  
Maybe We Can Go Back To Yesterday  
By Machiavelli  
  
Muhammad hates Callisto. He hates the snow, he hates the cold, he hates the men he passes on the street and in the tunnels of the subway. He hates the weak sunlight that the gate delivers to the sky, he hates every inch of the miserable excuse for a city they call Blue Crow. And above all else, he hates himself, with an intensity that only further increases as the days go by.  
But, here he is. He has nowhere else to go.  
So he's found himself a bar in the city, and does his best to overcome his aversion to alcohol. They used to call the bar Rester House, back when Muhammad started coming here. Then a couple of months back, the owner made the mistake of defaulting on his mortgage payments, and it got picked up by a corporation from Ganymede. So now it's named Cheers Callisto; not much else has changed, except now there's a new bartender and they put up new wallpaper a while back. The new bartender's name is Johnnie; Muhammad loathes him. But he keeps coming back.  
Mainly, he comes here for the music. There used to be a jazz saxophonist here a while back; he's gone now. Then a couple of weeks ago, the guitarist showed up. Muhammad doesn't know his name or where he came from. He doesn't seem to be an employee; he was just there one day when Muhammad came in, strumming this beaten-up electric at a table in the back. He plays mostly blues, and a couple of old songs Muhammad's grandparents might have listened to, or their grandparents before them.   
Muhammad doesn't so much remember those songs as he recognizes them, somewhere in the distant recesses of his mind. It's as if the music is written somewhere in his genome, the lyrics coded into his amino acids. He likes the song the guitarist is playing right now in particular; he doesn't remember his name. But something in his midbrain knows that it's about a girl and saying something wrong. And sometimes Muhammad thinks that's the only thing keeping him here.   
There are other people in Cheers Callisto right now. There's Johnnie, of course, with his company-regulation smile and that distant, bored look in his eyes. There's two miners, both in their forties, sitting at the bar a few seats down from Muhammad. There's a group of depressed-looking businessmen, probably economists or something, sitting around a table next to the door. There's a new guy Muhammad's never seen before, sitting a table over from the guitarist. He looks dangerous, in a way Muhammad can't quantify, and strangely passive. He doesn't even have a drink; he just is sitting there, listening to the guitarist. With his eyes closed.  
The song ends thirty seconds later. Which is right about when everything goes to hell.   
It happens in components. First, the guitarist ends the song, and lets his hand drop off the strings almost reverently. Then the company-policy bell rings, as it does every time the door opens. Then Muhammad mechanically looks up.  
And then the world freezes for a second. And for an eternity, Muhammad almost believes that it's her, standing in the door. Then the backlight fades, and he blinks his eyes, and it's just a woman he's never seen before. A beautiful woman, which is in itself a small miracle on Callisto. But her hair is shorter than Rachel's, and she's dressed like a prostitute.  
Then the world speeds up again. And that's when the woman raises the submachine gun she's carrying in one hand and sprays it across the bar.  
  
Muhammad doesn't even flinch, more out of surprise than anything else. The bullets go over his head; the muzzle flashes leave him seeing spots.  
When the woman's gun falls silent, the topography of the bar has completely changed. Johnnie's cowering underneath the bar somewhere; the businessmen have turned over their table and shielded themselves behind it. One of the miners has fallen off of his bar stool and is sprawled out across the ground; it initially looks like he's been hit, but Muhammad can hear him breathing and he has his hands behind his head, in the universal body language of the trembling hostage. The other miner hasn't moved; he hasn't even put down his drink, actually.  
The woman doesn't react. Actually, she just looks bored. She walks into the bar, past the businessmen, who turn their table to keep it between them and her. She passes by the bar; the miner doesn't even look up. Johnnie peers over the bar at her as she goes by, like a frightened, mildly lustful bunny rabbit. And she walks by Muhammad, without glancing his direction.  
Muhammad turns around, and sees her put the gun to the head of the guitarist. He's looking down, at the strings of the electric, as if in prayer. There's no sign of the new guy.  
"Lucien ?" the woman says, like she's stating a fact. She has a very flat tone to her voice, like someone who has anger management problems and wants the whole world to know it before the fact.   
The guitarist imperceptibly nods.  
"Where is Dr. Hesse ?"  
At first, Muhammad doesn't know who she's talking about. Then he thinks of a grey-haired man in a stained suit, has a beard, looks vaguely Jewish. Muhammad's always avoided him a result, more out of some buried cultural instinct than recent history. These days, he can't really see a need to be open-minded. But whenever the old man's at the bar, he sits with the guitarist.  
The guitarist murmurs something underneath his breath that Muhammad can't hear. Neither can the woman, apparently, because she points the gun down at the table and puts three rounds into it.   
"Speak up," she says, once the echoes die down.  
"I said his bounty's only one million," says the guitarist.  
"You know what they say," says the woman. She brings the gun back up to the guitarist's head. "Every little bit helps in this economy."  
The guitarist shrugs. "I'm right here, Miss Valentine."  
It takes Muhammad a second to realize the words came over from the door. He looks back; it's the old man. He's standing by the door, in a long grey trench-coat that's seen better days, and some kind of hat that looks like a compromise between a bowler and a fedora.  
There's a bang behind Muhummad, and suddenly his right ear isn't working anymore. The old man's hat is gone. A few wisps of material float down back through the doorway.  
"First lesson," says the woman from behind him. "I don't like people sneaking up on me."  
"My apologies," says the apparent Dr. Hesse.   
"How sweet of you," says the woman. There's a metallic click; the next second, a small red dot hovers over the exact center of the old man's forehead. "How about you come over here without making any sudden moves ?"  
But the old man doesn't move. He's looking at the woman carefully, at her eyes as far as Muhammad can tell. It reminds Muhammad of the way his father used to examine patients, back before the assholes had taken away his license. That in turn leads a series of unpleasant memories, so Muhammad shoves that line of thought as far into the back of his head as possible.  
The woman is not amused. "Anytime now, grandpa."  
"You believe you are hear to collect my bounty," says the old man. He says it as a statement, with no additional emotion.  
"I'm pointing a gun at your head," says the woman. "That's generally a good indication."  
The old man seems to ignore her. "I don't believe you are here to arrest me, Miss Valentine," he says.  
The woman sighs. The red dot drops from the old man down to his coat. "Hats are easy. You want me to try for the coat buttons ?"  
"Last time I checked, Lucien," says the old man, "you were worth one and a half million."  
He's looking at the guitarist. Muhammad turns back to see the guitarist shrug again; he's absentmindedly tuning his guitar underneath the table.  
The woman doesn't even blink. The red dot stays where it is. "Great. Two for the price of one."  
"I checked the bounty database last night," says the old man. "The bartender's worth three million."  
The woman's head snaps over to the bar. Muhammad hears a scramble underneath, then the door to the back opens and closes; Johnnie didn't bother to stand up.   
The doctor waits for her to turn her attention back to him, then he points in the direction of the two miners. The one on the ground has started to shake. "Jackson Brown and Gordo Lightfoot," says the old man. "Both worth twenty-five million, plus a five million bonus for bringing both in."  
Jackson screams something to the ground, something about murder and remembering faces. Gordo has reached behind the bar and is helping himself to another shot. He has a somewhat determined look, like a man who long ago swore on his mother's grave that he would never, ever leave a bar without finishing his drink.  
The woman looks indecisive now. The laser sight drifts uncertainly over the old man's coat and onto the doorframe. The doctor falls silent, and lets his hand drop.  
From behind the table, one of the businessmen raises his hand. "I'm worth nine million," he says. "Tax evasion."  
Gordo turns around; he looks interested. Another one of the businessmen raises his head above the table. "We all are, actually," he says. "Nine million each."  
Gordo looks over at the guitarist. The guitarist looks up. "Pissed off my label," he says quietly. He then looks back down.  
Jackson says something muffled to the ground that Muhammad can't hear.   
"Dude, they can't hear you," Gordo says, quietly.  
Jackson sits up. He's still trembling, and his eyes are all weird. "We were part of a militia group on Mars," he says. "And I cut a guy in Newcal. That's another fourteen."  
Muhammad realizes that Gordo is looking at him now. So are the businessmen; they've turned their table back upright and are sitting down again.  
So he shrugs. "I haven't done anything."  
Everyone in the room goes silent.   
Something in Muhammad tells him to say something. He looks down at his drink. What the hell. "There was this girl, you know ?"  
Nobody says anything. There's kind of a sliding sound. Muhammad looks up just in time to catch the bottle of whiskey Gordo was holding as it comes down the bar. On the other side, Gordo nods, sort of.  
There is a moment of awkward silence.  
Muhammad risks a glance back at the woman. He can't make out the expression on her face; maybe she's going to laugh. Maybe she's going to kill everyone within a five block radius. Maybe she's going to break down crying. It could go any of those ways.  
"I would like to advance a theory, Miss Valentine," says the doctor softly from the doorway. His voice is scarcely above a whisper, yet it echoes in the room.   
"I don't believe you're here for my bounty, nor for anyone else's. And I don't believe in mistakes either."  
The woman doesn't say anything.  
"Think," says the old man quietly. There is no sign of pressure in his voice, no hate or fear or motivation. "What are you here for ?"  
Muhammad is watching her eyes. He can't see any meaning in them; there seems to be nothing there.   
He doesn't even see her make the decision. She just raises the gun again.   
"Flashback," she says. Her voice has gone flat, as hollow as her eyes. "Now."  
The old man looks satisfied. He looks away from her, towards one of the windows in the back wall. "May I introduce my associate, Mr. John Keats," he says.  
And then there's this blur in the air. The woman falls to the ground, silently. The new guy is standing a few feet away from her, holding a knife blade-first in his hand. There's blood on the hilt, and he's smiling, not satisfied or lustful or angry or any of a hundred emotions Muhammad would expect in that place or time. Instead, he looks relieved. Like a man who's just had a burden lifted from his shoulders.  
And the guitarist is standing behind him. As everyone stares, as the woman lies there on the floor, as the doctor smiles from the doorway, he starts to play something. It sounds almost like a funeral dirge as it begins, low and slow and humble. Like a man screaming inside, where no one can hear him.  
  
And that's the last thing Muhammad remembers from that night.  
He woke up the next morning with the usual hangover, in his long-term hotel room up the street. It looks like he passed out fully clothed on the bed; he's got the whiskey bottle in his hand, and it's empty, and he's got a five o'clock shadow that looks ten hours old.  
And he's got a song stuck in his head for some reason, which makes him want to break open the minibar in the room. But the damn thing won't open - it locks automatically when you're more than a month behind on your rent, and Muhammad has that and more - and besides, he's an hour late for his node slot. So he stares at the screen, with his pounding headache, thinking about Rachel and trying to figure out what the hell happened last night.   
He keeps thinking about it, as the numbers march across the screen and across the web. Over to Earth, and Mars, and a hundred other locations, as outside his window the snow begins to fall. 


	8. Rambling On My Mind

The David Lynch Blues  
Rambling On My Mind  
By Machiavelli  
  
There are a couple of things a man would rather not find after he's walked three miles in the pouring rain with a bullet in his shoulder. One is finding your door won't open at the exact moment when the rain starts REALLY coming down.   
For the first minute or so, Jet figured Spike had just locked the hatch. Okay, no problem. He punched in the keycode - had to do it with his right arm, damn it, his left wrist wasn't working - and leaned on it again. The door wouldn't budge an inch.  
Cut to five minutes of banging his left arm on the door as best he could, screaming curses at the top of his lungs. Underneath his coat, the gauze was starting to soak through, which wasn't doing anything to improve his temper.  
Just when he was about to give up and break in through the window, the door opened just a crack. "Jet ?" Spike directly on the other side.  
"What the hell took you ?! Open the door !"  
"Hold on a second," said Spike. The door closed again. On the other side, there was the sound of something being dragged away across the metal ceiling.   
Soon as it sounded like whatever it was was clear of the door, Jet busted his way through. Spike was standing a few feet away from him, yawning. Again the wall was Jet's couch. From the skidmarks on the floor plating, it had been set right in front of the door.   
Spike was looking at Jet, specifically his left arm. "What happened to you ?"  
"Why the hell did you block off the door ?" said Jet.   
"I was looking for an interesting place to take a nap."  
Abruptly, some part of Jet's brain started laughing insanely in the back of his head. Oddly enough, it was the same part of him that wanted to pull out his gun and murder Spike, right then and there. Under the circumstances, Jet might have considered listening to it, had his body not decided that it had lost quite a bit of blood recently, thank you very much, and it was time to shut everything down. He tried to land on the futon as he collapsed; instead he bounced off and hit the floor face-first.   
Ten to one Spike could've made that, he thought as everything went dark.  
  
He smelled Raman noodles, a little while later. He opened his eyes to find himself in the living room, lying down on the couch. Staring up at the ceiling fan.  
The smell was coming from his left. Jet turned his eye that way. Spike was sitting across the table from him in one of the chairs. He was apparently trying to eat steamed noodles out of a mug using a spoon. He seemed to have gotten the hang of it, somehow - basically used it a shovel, slurping up whatever was left.  
"Your table manners are horrible," said Jet.  
Spike shrugged.  
"You mind if I ask you something ?" Spike didn't respond, so he went ahead. "How'd you do it ?"  
There was a pause as Spike swallowed a bite. "Do what ?" he said.  
"Get shot up like this and keep bouncing back. Like at the cathedral."  
Spike shrugged again. "Family secret." He went back to the noodle cup.  
Now that Jet thought about it, the pain didn't seem to be that big a deal. It was still there, but it sort of far away and distant. He glanced over on the tabletop, and noticed an empty morphine vial left on the table. Okay, that explained that.  
Also on the table was a big serving plate Jet had never seen before. There was a lot of blood on it. Plus a pair of tweezers, and this little lump of metal.  
He glanced back up from Spike. "That from me ?"  
"Yeah."  
Huh.  
At that point, everything started to get fuzzy again. Jet remembers Spike asking him a question, but he didn't quite catch what it was.  
"What'd you say again ?" asked Jet.  
"I said, what happened to Faye ?"  
"Oh. Her." And maybe Jet said something after that, but if he did, he'd be damned if he could remember what.  
  
Afterwards, Jet could really only remember a series of incidents, in no understandable order.  
At one point, he was sitting up on top of that building with Taxim again, and they both looking at the sunrise. Taxim was holding his tape recorder in one hand; in his other hand, he had a gun, which he was pressing to Jet's temple. He was also talking to Jet, in a tone that really reminded Jet of this one instructor he had at New Quantico.  
"I have three songs on this," Taxim was saying. He held up the tape recorder. "The first one destroys people. The second one gives them life."   
"What's the third one do ?" Jet remembers himself asking.  
Taxim opened his mouth, like he was going to answer. But it was right about then Jet realized that he couldn't be back on the roof, so logically he had to be dreaming. And just like that he woke up.  
Later, or before or maybe at the same time, he remembered waking up to hear gunfire, somewhere near. Instinctively, he had tried to get up, figure out where it was coming from. Sounded like it was close. And that was where the memory stopped, like somebody had hit stop on a VCR.  
And then at some point, he remembered watching Spike exercise. It looked like he was shadowboxing, except he was moving all over the room. Punching outward one way, dodging left to counter it. All into the air, against some kind of invisible attacker or an imaginary Vicious. Jet remembered that he personally couldn't move a muscle, not even his eyes. So he just watched Spike fight whoever it was, and then he slept some more.  
  
And then abruptly everything came back into focus.  
Jet opens his eyes. It's dark in the living room; looks like it's night. Christ, he feels like shit. Like someone tried to pull his brain out through his nose.  
He pulls himself up on the couch. Glances at the clock on the table; it's five am. All right, so it's not night, it's early morning. Big difference. He gropes out with his hand, finds a lamp cord over by where his head was.   
The light hurts his eyes, well, more than they're already hurting anyway. The lamp sheds a little cone of light across the room. First thing Jet notices is the floor's a mess. Ramen cups all over the place; on the table in front of him there's this pyramid of squashed beer cans. Spike never had been big on trash cans.  
That having been said, his shoulder feels better. He tries moving it around; it starts hurting again almost immediately, so he stops. So then he tries the left arm; it's still basically the way it was after the rooftop. Spike probably didn't know what to do with it, though from the toolkit next to the beer can pyramid it looks like he tried. Maybe Jet can do something with that later.  
The handprint is still there, underneath the elbow.  
The hatch opens behind him. Jet looks up; it's Spike. He looks pissed. He jumps over the stairs, kicks a couple Ramen containers violently out his way. Drops a gun onto the table; it slides right into the beer can pyramid, which collapses over the tv. He collapses in the chair across from Jet and sits down, lights a cigarette.  
Jet takes another glance at the gun. It's a Glock 17, military issue.  
"Where'd you get that ?"  
He looks at Spike. Spike just glares at him, then goes back to the cigarette. Uh. Okay.  
Jet tries the shoulder again. A little bit better this time; pain's still there, but he's ready for it. He manages to get it to rotate in place. Flexes the elbow and the wrist; they ache, but they work.  
He looks up. "You got another one of those ?"  
Spike gives him a who-do-the-hell-you-think-you-are kind of look. Then he takes out a box and passes them across the table.  
They sit there for a couple of minutes. It occurs to Jet that he doesn't know how long he's been out. Feels like his first cigarette in maybe a year. He glances over at the clock again - okay, make that a week. Felt like a year, though.  
Across the table, Spike seems to have downgraded from pissed off to mild annoyance.   
"Hey," says Jet. "Didn't know you knew how to pull bullets."  
Spike looks up. "I don't."  
The ache in Jet's shoulder intensifies. Probably just psychosomatic.  
There's a bang, somewhere out on the deck. Across the table, Spike sighs and mutters something underneath his breath. Then suddenly he's on his feet and holding the Glock.  
Jet eyes him. "Something wrong ?"  
"You could say that," says Spike. He's heading towards the hatch now. He hits the plate; it starts to open.  
"What does that mean ?" Jet says.  
Spike glances back at him. "Watch some TV." Then he's out the hatch, and it closes behind him.  
  
So Jet turns on the TV. He grabs the toolkit and starts in on his arm while he's at it; as a result, he figures out Spike wasn't trying to fix his arm. He's just been using a screwdriver to open beer cans.   
The TV's on CBC when it comes on, so Jet just leaves it there. Speaking of the beer cans, something's been slowly dawning on him - his head hurts, yeah, that's to be expected. But the dry mouth, the way everything seems kind of distant… Spike wouldn't have been feeding him the beer, would he ?...  
-- and therefore perhaps open a new chance for peace on a battered world. I'm Andrew Peshganiv, CBC News. Back to you, Bill. Thanks, Andrew --  
Getting off the wrist plating will the handprint is going to be hell. So he works with the hand for a little while. It's not really the main problem, just some minor tweaks here and there. One thing at a time.  
-- now we turn to Judi Tressna with our hourly BountyWatch. Judi ? Thanks, Bill. --  
Oh, yeah, this. Jet's never trusted the network bounty coverage. Usually they'd just give you the party line. That other show, what was it called - that at least had some good info. Looked like shit, but research was a lot better. Don't know why they canceled that…  
-- police have issued a 800,000 woolong reward for anyone connected with the case. In recent news, in a near unprecedented turn of events, authorities have AGAIN upped the bounty on one Jet Black, a former ISSP officer now classified by authorities as a terrorist threat --  
Wait, what ?   
-- now at 34 million woolongs. Black, age thirty-six, graduated from ISSP training at New Quantico with honors. A native of Ganymede, he retired in 2064 for unspecified reasons. Black was last seen in Aruba City on Mars two and a half months ago. His current whereabouts are unknown. Today on Venus, authorities confirmed the capture of one Vanessa Robinson, fourteen, wanted for armed robbery --  
It's a joke. It's got to be a joke of some kind.   
Behind him, the hatch opens. He looks up to see Spike walk in. Spike is holding another gun in his hand; he tosses the Glock to Jet.  
"Here. One of them had a Jericho."  
Jet points to the TV. "This is some kind of joke, right ?"  
-- and that's it for BountyWatch. Please tune in next hour, as we continue to update you on the most recent information. Back to you, Bill. Thanks, Judi. --  
Spike looks back at him. He's got lines underneath his eyes, like he hasn't slept for a while. "Who'd be laughing ?"  
-- so what do you think of that Jet Black character, Judi ? Former ISSP officer gone bad ? It's a tragedy, Bill --  
Jet stares at the TV. "How long has this been on ?"  
"Since the night after you got back."  
-- seems like they let anyone onto to the force these days --  
"It started out at five million," says Spike. "They upped it to twenty on Saturday."  
"Has anyone come after me ?"  
"Where do you think I got the cigarettes from ?" Spike points a thumb into the corner behind Jet.  
-- you know what they say, Bill. When angels fall, they're the worst of all… --  
In the corner of the room, lying against the wall, there's a pile of guns. Three pistols, a shotgun, two submachine guns. Even one or two grenades.  
"How many ?" Jet hears himself ask.  
"Only four or five so far," Spike says behind him. "Two just now. I'm surprised there haven't been more."  
-- take care, Bill. You too, Judi. Now onto sports with our own Sanjay Shah. Sanjay ? Thanks, Bill. So far, it's turning out to be a great season to be a hockey fan --  
Maybe Jet's still sick. Maybe all of this is a dream, and all he has to do is close his eyes and wake up.  
Or maybe the world's just gone insane.  
Across the table, Spike collapses again in the chair. He pulls out another cigarette and lights it. He looks exhausted. Like he's been fighting a war.  
"As much as I like Mars, Jet, I think it might be time for a change in scenery," he says.  
-- bringing the Crush to victory. Final score, thirty-four to nine. Back to you, Bill. 


End file.
